Game 134, Mariners at Devil Rays
Meche vs Shields, 4:05 pm.
Gil Meche was legitimately terrible in August, posting a 6.87 ERA that was completely earned. He couldn’t throw strikes, didn’t miss bats, and averaged just over four innings per start. At this point, the M’s have to hope that Meche finishes the year strong enough to be classified as a Type B free agent, which would enable them to receive a relatively high draft choice (as high as #16) when he signs some ridiculous contract with another ballclub this winter. Personally, I’m just thrilled there’s only a month left in the Gil Meche as Mariner Pitcher era.
Also, Ben Broussard, it’s time for a 4-5, 2 HR evening. Benuardo hasn’t exactly been hitting well since coming over from Cleveland, and we’re tired of having our DH’s hit like pitchers.
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So Jaime Shields…Is he a prospect? His strikeout rate isn’t bad and he’s only 24. I’m trying to figure out if this is the Mariners flailing against someone because they’re obscure, or because they’re actually good. Not watching on TV, I can’t really figure out how good he is.
That heckler is awesome.
say, didn;t Ryan has a knuckler? 🙂
well, I can’t find the link to the illustration done by the Times a few years back, but here is a similar description out of the Journal Sentinal back in ’98.
re, Gil:
“Sporting News, The, May 19, 2003 by Lewis Shaw
RHP Gil Meche MARINERS
Role: He was considered a top-of-the-rotation prospect when he came up in 1999 as a 20-year-old throwing in the mid-90s. Two shoulder surgeries later, he’s happy to be No. 5 in the Mariners’ rotation. He is pitching in the majors for the first time in 2 1/2 years.
Stuff: The 6-3, 200-pound Meche is a power pitcher with command of his four-seam fastball, sinker, curveball, slider and changeup. His four-seamer touches 95 mph, his sinker 94 and his slider 86. Sometimes he labors when throwing his four-seamer. He throws a good diving changeup in the 84- to 85-mph range that moves away from lefthanded hitters. He features two types of curveballs: a 12-to-6, or overhand, curve, and a knuckle curve. His 12-6 has good late bite and tilt, but his knuckle curve has sharper bite. He challenges lefthanded hitters inside with a plus sinking fastball and goes at righthanders with a four-seamer that rides in hard on the fists. A heavy sinker is his pitch of choice; that and his changeup are his out pitches. He is deceptive, and he mixes his pitches well. He will set hitters up in a pattern: curveball away; fastball away; sinker inside. Hitters think he is predictable pitching inside, but he is not.”
Have you ever seen anyone so completely mortified as Leatherlung’s kid?
does that resigned yet rather embarrassed-looking kid belong to the heckling guy?
David, Shields was a pitcher who had a lot of injury problems in the past, and was completely off our radar as fans. Then, he finally got healthy, came back in 2005 and dominated AA and the AFL, and then followed that up with a very impressive season in AAA this year before getting the call. He doesn’t have great stuff, but his changeup is world class and as long as he has that, he will be pretty successful. He’s not a bad pitcher.
thanks killa
pretty nice low pitch inning
It also helps Shields that the M’s are hackers. They really are swinging at some ridiculous pitches. Not Beltre, of course. No way he’d swing at shit low and outside.
Shields’ changeup is really, really good. It’s hard to lay off. He purposely throws it out of the zone, too. It has real late fade to it and falls out of the zone. That’s why I said, as long as he has that pitch, he’ll be successful. His fastball isn’t overpowering, and his curve is only average, but his change is a plus-plus pitch.
55. yes that’s his kid, apparently the kid has been training to either take over from or join dad.
el caps
El Caps indeed
nice to see mike reilly take a hard one
re: “the M’s have to hope that Meche finishes the year strong enough to be classified as a Type B free agent, which would enable them to receive a relatively high draft choice (as high as #16)”
I’m not an expert on these rules, but perhaps someone can explain if this possible rule change to the Collective Bargaining Agreement would mean no high draft pick regardless:
http://www.maurybrown.com/?p=333
If we want to showcase Gil, sending him out there with 104 pitches doesn’t make much sense. Come to think of it, doing that in a tie game doesn’t make mu.ch sense either.
I stand corrected
Honestly, does anyone have any idea what has gotten into Gil and if that can be expected to continue?
gil solved all his problems during his last outing, (something about flipping pitches) of course, we’ve heard that a few times before.
It looks like he just got tired for a while, which was why he regressed to being rubbish for most of August. He did this last year too – he was only mediocre-to-bad up until the all-star break, then was really awful for a while afterwards, probably muttering about his arm being tired, then got a rest, then looked a bit better. It seemed particularly dumb, to me at least, to go to all the effort of making sure he didn’t get any extra rest over the all-star break by starting him in consecutive games.
This is old an off topic, but I didn’t see the Mariners web gems, could someone list what they were? Thanks.
1. JR VS BARFIELD & BROKEN WRIST
2. BUHNER AT FENWAY
3. ICHIRO CLIMBS THE WALL
2 AND 3 MIGHT HAVE BEEN REVERSED
Sad news from the Red Sox about Puyallup’s Jon Lester, the rookie LHP. He’s been diagnosed with “a treatable form of lymph node cancer.”
I’m sure there’s supposed to be a silver lining in that news, but it cannot be a good thing to be told at age 22 that you have cancer, treatable or not.
link
How long is he going to be out? Is it career-ending? The article doesn’t say..
Ah shit. Leave it to Grover to put in the pitcher with the least MLB experience in a tie game, bottom of the 9th.
#74: I think the first priority is to treat the cancer before they worry about how long he’s out. It’s not too tough to figure that the season is over for him.
It must be said: DOYLE!!!!!!
And then pulls him for the pitcher with the second-least experience in the majors on the roster.
It must be said: HARGROVE, YOU FUCKING MORON!
godforbid you keep Sherrill in to finish the inning.
Boo crappy offense.
#80: godforbid you keep Sherrill in to finish the inning.
Uh, if Sherrill hadn’t walked Navarro, he would have finished the inning. Hargrove didn’t walk the guy.
Homer Simpson: Borrring!
Hm, well, pulling Sherrill is a defensible move, I suppose, but replacing him with one rookie after the other? Putz would have been the proper call (going with the yank the pitcher theory).
#84: Hargrove doesn’t put the closer into a tie game on the road. We know that. We saw it in Toronto, two days in a row. It is a “by the book” Baseball 101 (non-)move.
His only non-rookie option out of the bullpen was Piñeiro. How popular would that move have been? You think Hargrove’s going to bring a failed starter into the game with the winning run 90 feet away?
Drayer had some interesting thoughts post-game– when they were trying to find what might be a home field advantage in Tropicana, she mentioned that the grounds crew had ‘watered the heck out of the dirt around the bags’, and that when Ichiro went into 3rd in the first inning, he kicked a soggy sandcastle up next to the bag (not unlike the struggles the team had with the mound in Oakland, she added) and that the empty stadium could be said to be an advantage, in that to the D-Rays players 11,000 fans is the norm, and to visitors it is a dead & empty place …. shen then wondered just what the win/loss split might be for the Ms this year when playing in front of a big crowd vs a small one.
Forget “career-ending”: “treatable” or not, lymphoma is frequently life ending. If they caught it early (before it spread) and if he’s fortunate, it’s certainly possible for him to come back in a couple of years (of course getting back into pitching shape takes time too). But he’s going to have much higher priorities than baseball for quite some time.
It sounds like they did catch it in time with Lester.
He has a lot of things working to his advantage — age, athleticism. The chances of him dying are there, but this isn’t like lung (>50% death rate) or pancreatic (90% death rate). It’s not melanoma, either (
er.
It’s not melanoma, either (less than 10% if caught in time), but he has a very good chance of seeing this through.